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One thing that is constantly changing in this world is Google. The search engine has undergone several changes over the years and internet users witnessed Google’s transformation. Recently, people noticed the ads that are displayed at the top most list of local search results. With the removal of the sidebar ads, people are now left with no choice but to scroll further down just to glance at the results of their Google search. As a consequence, there is now a more intense competition in the field of SEO and some people are also at a loss regarding its status.

To help people in this regard, it is highly important that they are able to determine their primary goals first. It is pertinent that they have sense of direction of the place that they want to head to. For example, if a person’s primary goal is to market a specific place, like a hotel, then his focus should be on attracting more people to book reservations. In relation to this, people must aim at increasing their ranks in Google’s local results that are related to sites, such as Tripadvisor, that provide good reviews.

THE TRUTH ABOUT LOCAL SEARCH IN 2016

At present, various factors that affect the local SEO, such as the algorithm, the business owners’ efforts, and the marketers’ hard work, are now different from those of the previous years. In the past, not all businesses are into the field of local SEO but nowadays, it seems that everyone wants to get involved with it.

When talking about local search results and SEO, most people focus on the tactics that would land their pages higher in Google’s search results. However, what most of us don’t understand is how Google determine the rank of the pages that come out with their local search results.

In addition, people should also not focus on landing their pages on the top of the search results. The ranking of their pages does not really guarantee the success of their websites.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of internet users, how they perceive the search results may mean an entire different things and can greatly affect their perception of the list of websites they found through the local search engine.

Let’s for an example a person looking for plumbing services. When that person decides to do some search in Google engine, he will see the familiar lay out of the paid ads preceding the local search results. It is possible that the user would forego the paid ads and just proceed on looking at the local results. The user may click first the website with the most positive reviews. Then afterward, he may check the other sites in lists and assess other websites that received positive reviews from various customers. In the end, the use will pick the one that appealed to him the most even when the website is not number on Google’s search results.

The situation above only proves that people may have different practices when it comes to scrutinizing the Google search results. It is very possible that internet users will not click the first link that arises, whereas other people look for those with good reviews first. And with such variety, what website owners should really focus on identifying their primary goals and not increasing their rankings in the local search results.

In a study conducted by Local SEO Guide and PlacesScout.com on local SEO ranking factors, the researchers focused on the data at hand in forming their conclusions. In relation to the study, there numerous data points that the researchers were able to analyze though there were also those which they could not access.

In the study, the top 5 ranking factors were as follows. (In reality, many data points could have been considered aside from the five that were mentioned below)

Highly reviewed locations are more like to have higher rankings.

Based on observations, local listing that are highly reviewed are associated with increased click. However, on the other hand, it is noteworthy that some sites without a lot of reviews also have the tendency to acquire higher rankings.

Profile views are correlated with higher rankings.

For those who are not very familiar with SEO, the click-through rate studies conducted by Darren Shaw of Whitespark and Rand from Moz indicate that results with more clicks are correlated with higher rankings in the search engine results.

From the statements above, it is only logical to think that a site with good reviews may also have higher rankings in the search results. However, aside from just clicking the websites with good reviews, internet users should spend some time in analyzing the pages that they visit.

A strong correlation has been found between sites with high Majestic AC Rank and high local rankings.

Internet users can measure their backlinks using a variety of tools. These tools may include those that are used by Moz, Majestic SEO, Ahrefs, and many others. When assessing backlinks, it is better if the users utilize a variety of tool in order to gain more comprehensive comparisons. Though link tools can be very useful in detecting links, their work is not as detailed as the one that is done by Google.

On the other hand, it has been found that 3 out of the top 5 correlation factors include the link signals of webpages. Thus, there is still some hope for the use of SEO. In fact, links still play a great role in choosing the more useful webpages form the search results. Moreover, SEO can still help in determining the good quality links which in turn can aid in the progress of business companies.

Referring subnets are highly correlated with strong local rankings.

The total number of referring IPs are also indicative of their high correlation with strong local rankings.

OTHER MISSING FACTORS

Aside from those mentioned above, citations and website landing pages are also important factors that affect the rankings of the search engine results.

HOW TO BEAT THE COMPETITION IN THE SEARCH RESULTS

In improving their ranks in the search results, people must learn how to be competitive enough and they should not solely rely on the results provided to them by internet tools. Thus, first and foremost, they should have their Google My Business listing optimized. It is important that webpage owners make sure that their listing is in accordance with Google’s guidelines.

Meanwhile, people may need to exert extra effort if they are not thinking of ranking organically based on their keywords. In fact, they should not assume that they will get ranked locally unless their websites do really deserve a spot and if such ranks are organic. In short, webpage owners must address some major issues about their sites first.

FIXING THE MAJOR OUTLYING ISSUES

When webpage owners are already pretty sure that they have addressed some underlying problems with their websites, they can start focusing their attention on some more pertinent problems that can affect their rankings in the search engine results.

DUPLICATE LISTINGS

SUSPENDED WEBSITE

INTENDING TO RANK FOR A KEYWORD

Webpage owners may have trouble increasing their ranks when they are not located within the vicinity of a targeted area.

INCORRECT CATEGORIES

AVOID USING SHORT CUTS AND MAKE SURE TO NOTICE THOSE SPAMS

Competitors may resort to spamming and other webpage owners should be aware of this. In fact, it is imperative that they report any incident involving spamming. At present, people can now address this issue much easier thanks to the improvements made by Google. Practicing ethical and professional conducts is important in every aspect of the business industry even in the case of increasing the rankings in the search results.

TRADITIONAL SIGNALS ARE STILL GOING STRONG

Though there are now some changes that can be observed with the ranking process and results, it still cannot be denied that companies with high rankings in the organic and non-local search results also tend to have high placements when it comes to the local search results. Thus, webpage owners should properly manage the organic optimization of their sites and ensure that they do this from a ranking and user experience perspectives.

DO MIND THOSE REVIEWS

A study has shown that millennials place great importance to reviews and they are commonly observed using their mobile devices in reading user reviews and obtain information from various social media websites. And with the advent of modern technology and the prevalent use of mobile devices, millennials spend most of their time in various media platforms that are found over the internet. The importance given by millennials to the reviews on website indicate how reviews may play role in ranking a webpage based on the local search engine results.

In reality, reviews can positively affect the ranking via the increase in click-through rates of the users. In addition, people tend to put more trust in business with good reviews, and in turn, businesses can profit more if a lot of people trust them.

CONSIDER ADDING REVIEWS AND CUSTOMER FEEDBACK IN THE CREATION OF A BUSINESS MODEL

Since reviews can be very important when it comes to rankings, then website owners must ensure that their customers can leave feedback on their pages. A means for receiving feedback should be considered when constructing business models. For those who do not have any planned review strategies yet, they can check out companies, such as Get Five Stars, which specialize in providing review services. With such services, people can easily monitor that feedback and reviews that come from their customers and they can also use a review widget on their websites in return.

CREATING A REVIEW LINK FOR THE CUSTOMERS

Marketing systems, such as InfusionSoft, can help webpage owners in creating review links that can be included in outgoing emails. Direct links to review screen can be created, especially when the users are logged in to their Google accounts.

DISPLAYING THE REVIEWS ON THE WEBSITE

It is not that hard to include reviews on a specific website. In fact, people can use starts, the customer’s profile pictures, and quotes from other webpages when adding reviews to their sites. On the other hand, a review schema may help in increasing the number of stars of a website when it comes to organic search results.

ON-PAGE AND TECHNICAL SEO

In most cases, people think that what is important about SEO is just merely showing up in top list of the search results. However, people should realize that marketing efforts should also be rewarded in other forms and not just by high rankings. In fact, there are some aspects of SEO that they should also consider to get the optimum results.

The website speed is another important factor that webpage owners must pay attention to when they are trying to increase their rankings. They can check their website’s page via google and assess the traffic leading to their pages.

WEBSITE USABILITY

When contemplating about their ranking in the search results, webpage owners should ask themselves several questions. First, they should ask themselves whether a particular user would prefer clicking the link to their websites than those of other competitor companies. Moreover, should that user decide to click the links to their websites, owners should think if their visitor would be satisfied with contents of the pages. And in case that they think that customer dissatisfaction is highly probably, they should think about the factors that can lead to such conditions.

Though most consider first getting high rankings for a certain keyword, webpage owners should also think about the experience of the users when browsing the internet. For instance, owners should entertain the possibility of the users clicking other websites after visiting their own. In case such things happen, webpage owners must be able identify whether the visitors did not succeed in finding the information that they were looking for, their pages are taking too much time to load, or whether visitors encountered some usability issues.

WHAT TO DO WHEN IT COMES TO CITATIONS

It is previously mentioned that citation was not included in the top 5 factors that can affect the rankings in search engine results. Citations are not much of a problem anymore since Google has already improved their functions concerning data and data sources. In the field SEO, considerable attention has been paid to devaluing citation as a ranking factor. Though some people think that something must be done to clean up the citations, it won’t probably help people that much when it concerns their rankings. And in relation to this, webpage should learn about some things with regard to citations.

First, people should have an idea about citations, which basically are links or are capable of accommodating links. There is little chance of increasing the ranking of a webpage when the link is buried beneath the results for millions of other businesses. However, webpage owners should still place importance in their citation sources as a form of link sources.

Next, it is important that data on the data aggregator and top citation levels are correct to avoid incurring issues concerning bad data. Providing the correct data is not that hard for newly established business but relocated business ventures are a different case, and thus, information on them must be thoroughly updated. Webpage owners should not worry about this kind of problem that much because they can easily sign up for Moz Local when the need to address such issue arises.

Third, third party websites are also used for promoting business. This is best exemplified by the hotel owners who aim at including their establishments on TripAdvisor’s list. The use of such third party websites can greatly help in reaching a person’s primary goals for his webpage.

On the other hand, webpage owners should focus addition attention to the top citations, especially when their websites rank a bit too far below the topmost search engine results. During such cases, they should focus on things that can greatly change things for them when it comes to website rankings.

Links should also be given outmost importance because neglect on these can lead to diminishing returns. In the long, proper use of links on webpages can bring positive results on the improvement of rankings.

Meanwhile, some people also think that proper indexing of citations can also help in the rankings of a website.

OBTAIN USEFUL LINKS AND AVOID GETTING CRAPPY LINKS

When attention is more focused on using links, webpage owners should ensure that all the links that they use are working because they can really affect their ranking status. It is important that the links pose certain authority and that the users are able to place their trust in them.

In some cases, webpage owners may be more successful if they decide to use chamber of commerce links, local scholarship links, hyper-local directory links, local newspaper links, and links from industry partners. The success associated with such links can be observed when webpage owners have already managed their keyword targeting, citations, content, NAP, site design, and other pertinent factors.

For some business clients including the city name and the business type in the anchor text may prove to be useful as long as the webpage managers ensure that they won’t overdo it. In relation to this, it would be a great help if people learn about some great links that may have some benefits to their businesses.

HelpAReporter.com

The website for Help A Reporter Out (HARO) provide their email subscribers with some notable information everyday. There are also email indicating the desire of some journalists to conduct interviews on certain business experts. With HARO, business owners may be able to participate in an interview, which in turn, can help in promoting their businesses.

SPONSORING A LOCAL EVENT

Sponsoring local events is one great way of promoting businesses across the internet. During sponsored local events, sponsor logos and links to their websites are commonly included in an organization’s landing pages. Thus, when a business is sponsoring an event, it is very likely that will be included in the town’s local website.

AIM TO BE INCLUDED IN LOCAL BUSINESS DIRECTORIES

It is also important for webpage owners to be included in local business directories. To accomplish this, they can try searching their city name in the Google search engine and looking at the highest ranking websites for their city. Based on the results, they can join the websites that are on the topmost search results.

DO SOMETHING FOR THE COMMUNITY IN RETURN

All people should not forget doing something for their communities. For business owners, they can do this by implementing various projects that are aimed at helping the locals of a city and using these projects to provide the people with some idea regarding the kind of work that a specific business does.

For a while google was targeting press releases. But these days doing a proper press release is the single best way to start you inbound link building campaign. Just be sure that the anchor is for the naked url and that does something very important. In the SEO world it is known as pillowing. This helps avoid penguin penalities for over optimizing your anchor text.

Press releases previously served as a communication tool that bridged company PR staff or PR firms and the media. However, at present and with the advent of various online news websites, including Google News and Yahoo News, disseminating press releases and RSS can now be easily accomplished in order to deliver different kinds of news to the people. In this aspect, press releases are also now being utilized as a tool for communicating with the consumers.

Aside from distributing various news contents to the media and the consumers, press releases can also be effectively used in syndicating potentially useful links. In some cases, some SEO firms optimize their press releases which after distribution, may result in a gain of a considerable number of domain name links.

Meanwhile, popular news search engines, such as Business Wire, PR Newswire, PRWeb, and Market wire can be used by companies in obtaining news content in a much easier manner.

Based on a report given by comScore, half of the people who use the internet has been found to be visiting online new sites each month. The online news sites that are commonly visited by internet users include MSNBC, The New York Times, CNN, and many more. In addition, it seemed that Yahoo! News tends to be the most visited news site that is visited by internet users.

Because news search potentially brings in a lot of opportunities, company marketers are using such situation to their advantage and they ensure that their PR are exposed to people as much as possible. Thus, for those who are contemplating about using press releases as a marketing tool, they should learn about some important things first.

START WITH ANNOUNCING SOMETHING THAT IS WORTH THE ATTENION OF THE PEOPLE

No matter how optimized it is, no people would pay much attention to some boring news. Thus, it is important that a specific and interesting topic should be focused on during a press release. However, when there is too much information and a lot of keywords are used, there is the danger of diluting the message which can affect its delivery to search engines and to the readers.

FOCUS ON GOING UPWARD AND TO THE LEFT

When optimizing a press release, people should consider the necessary optimization principles, and they must ensure that all the pertinent keywords are situated in the upper portion of the document.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRESS RELEASE

Press releases can be distributed through wire services, including PRWeb, PRNewswire, and Business Wire. When using various wire services, people should remember that news search engines tend to filter duplicated press releases. In cases like this, people can try mixing up their press releases to maximize the positive results for their press release.

GIVE THE READERS SOMETHING THAT WILL MAKE THEM WANT TO CLICK THROUGH

It is not enough that a news is announced to the consumers. The people must be given an opportunity to take some action and participate in some activities. Some effective ways of doing this include providing readers with free trials, special offers, paper downloads, webinars, podcasts, reports, newsletters, and consultations.

CONSTRUCT A LANDING PAGE

A landing page can be used in converting press release visitors into prospective clients or customers. Moreover, landing pages can also be used in PPC campaigns along with press releases. In the release, links leading to relevant resources can be embedded, which in turn, may also lead the reader to the sales cycle.

CREATE A MEDIA CONTACT LIST

Such list can be used when emailing the press release which should include a concise summary of the contents. It is also better if the email includes exclusive offers that are only accessible to the receivers and the email should also be indicative of the familiarity of the sender with some of the work done by media person being contacted.

MAKE THE JOB EASY FOR JOURNALIST AND BLOGGERS

When sharing the press release with media personnel and bloggers alike, it is important that these people are able to write about the piece of news with as much ease as possible. This can be done by providing such people with a summary of the press release and making sure that the contacted person is familiar with the topic of the news.

POST THE RELEASE IN THE COMPANY’S BLOG

In most cases, company websites may have a blog section in which posts, as well as press releases, are arranged chronologically or based on various categories. A search bar should also be provided to allow people to search for additional information, such as photos and videos, and related links.

CREATE ANOTHER VERSION OF THE NEWS THAT CAN BE USED IN BLOGS

The blog version of the news should be sent to the relevant social media websites. Though the blog version of a news may not suit all content types, it will still surely reflect some aspects of the culture and portion of the society that the news is aiming at.

SOCIAL BOOKMARK SITES CAN BE USED FOR CLIPPING SERVICES

Social bookmark services, including Furl.net, blogmarks.net, and del.icio.us can be used in connecting online media rooms and releases and in turn, create crawlable links that can be used in the search engines.

There are mainy types of SEOs. One of the most common is the blogger. With google moving toward LSI latent semantic indexing getting the onpage stuff right in the content development can have a much bigger impact than in past years. Simply making quality blog posts can with SEO done properly can make or break a site with very little additional work. In fact we have seen sites created for low competition keywords that have only two low quality links from relevant directories ranking on the first page of google.

In optimizing blogs via SEO, several processes may be involved, such as the optimization process, the thought process, strategy process, content creation, and the specific optimization of a blog post. Thus, writing and maintaining blogs are not that easy. In fact, a blogger must be adept with certain skills and should also know a thing or two about SEO.

Several procedures must be followed when writing a blog post though accomplishing them all is not necessary nor doing them in sequence. In reality, blogger may already have some ideas in his head before he does anything about his blog. However, what is more important is that a blogger learns how increase the search traffic that will eventually lead to his blog.

IDENTIFYING THE AIMS OF A BLOG POST

A blogger cannot just post anything that he wants. He must first learn how to identify the specific goals of each blog that he intends to post. Bloggers should keep in mind any ideas that they could think of or better yet, write the ideas on a paper so that they will not forget such things. Knowing the goals of a post can help a blogger in achieving the following:

Gaining more audience or blog visitors from particular groups of people

Convincing people regarding the ideas that they post in their blogs

Promoting a specific product or service to intended clients

Disseminate pertinent and current information regarding a blogger’s company or business

Share some noteworthy experience to the people who can relate

Share some insights into important issues that are most talked about all over the internet or in various social media websites

Answer queries and conduct other related activities

After identifying their major goals for a blog, bloggers should next determine the parameters of their goals. Such parameters may come in the form of traffic, engagement of the visitors with a specific post, the visitors’ comments, or the use of links.

Another important parameter is the use of social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, which can be very helpful in gaining new audiences.

Afterward, bloggers should contemplate whether their blog visitors would truly visit and read their blogs, and whether the visitors would share their blogs in various online platforms.

IDENTIFYING THE TARGET AUDIENCE

Any blog post should target a specific group of audience. The target audience may include old and new and potential blog readers and followers. Some of these audiences are capable of influencing other people through their posts in various media, and bloggers should take note of enticing such kind of people when trying to identify their target audience.

Meanwhile, the target audience can also be very specific, such as those who specialize in various fields and activities.

CONDUCT A KEYWORD SEARCH

After the conception of ideas and identification of ideas, now comes the keyword search. The number of target keywords should be around 3 to 5, which are the optimum numbers that can be used in reaching a single blog post.

When focusing on keyword search, what people really want to know is whether they will be able to incur relatively high volume, low difficulty, and high click-through rate chances in return. It is also important that people can easily arrive at searching the intended keywords which should overcome the parameters set by search engines in ranking websites.

When bloggers see other websites which feature different videos, they are bound to think that they also need those kinds of things for their blogs. The desire to include videos in blog posts should be expected especially when bloggers are aiming at reaching websites that can potentially mention their posts.

Thus, in relation to the use of keywords, the target keywords should be the same as those that are searched by internet users. Moreover, the keywords that people are looking for should be more or less the same as the goal of a specific blog post.

CONDUCT A THOROUGH AND COMPREHENSIVE RESEARCH

There are several factors that should be considered when conducting a research regarding the creation of an effective blog post. First, bloggers should look for other people who are ranking the keywords that they are intending to use. They can accomplish this task by simply doing a Google search or by using SERPs analysis with tools, such as the Keyword Explorer.

Next, bloggers should research on the people who incurred numerous shares and likes on various social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest. To do this, people can use BuzzSumo or Moz Content’s Search tool.

Afterward, bloggers should be able to identify that one thing that would render their blog posts unique. Thus, it is important that they post something entirely different from the other topics that have been discussed by other people. However, it is up to the bloggers to determine the factors that can affect the uniqueness of their posts.

PROCEED WITH CREATING A BLOG POST

Creating a blog post implies the continuation of the research started in the previous step. After a blogger has already accomplished the previous steps, creating a posts should be much easier. This is the point in which a blogger can bring out his potential in creating and writing unique and noteworthy blogs that may appeal to the target audience, rank high in the search engine results, and shared in various notable social media platforms.

In addition, this step involves determining the type of content that should be included in a blog post. Thus, in this step, a blogger will be pretty sure required to write something. However, when creating a blog post, the blogger may contemplate about adding some images, videos, or additional data to their post. They are also bound to consider if such additional contents should be embedded using other sites or whether they should just settle on using rich media file.

ON-PAGE SEO/ KEYWORD TARGETING

In on-page SEO, the blogger must first consider a primary keyword phrase as his target. This primary keyword phrase should be included in the title, headline, and URL of particular blog post. Afterward, a blogger must also think of another set of 2 to 4 secondary keywords that may be included in the meta description, image alt tags, and content of the website. Then, it will be just a matter of properly placing the keywords in various sections of the title, URL, meta description, headline, content, and images.

The next step involves targeting old URLs that can be used in redirecting to a particular post. For example, a blogger has in mind a specific post that he had created a few months ago and he want to redirect that old post to another and more current one. Then, the dilemma for the bloggers would be the kind of posts that they should look for or where they should link the contents of their new posts. Redirection can be very helpful to an audience who may want to browse old blog posts and in increasing a blog’s ranking in the search engine results.

FORMULATE AN OUTREACH AND AMPLIFICATION PLAN

In doing this step, the blogger should first determine the kind of people that he wants to reach with his post and think of things that can possibly help him in achieving such goals. In addition, the blogger must also think of ways on how he can target his audience and the means by which he can reach out to them. In fact, there are several methods that a blogger can use in reaching out people. These methods include emailing, using social media websites, and meeting people in person.

Afterward, the blogger must think of the proper time when he should reach out his target audience. They may choose to contact them before publishing a post if he thinks that his target audience can provide him with some useful insights which he can use in his blog, or he may choose to do it after a particular blog has already been put up.

When employing the help of a specific person, bloggers should think of the reason why such person would be willing to help them in their blogs. They must assess whether that person can make their post more unique or give them information that they haven’t known before.

DO SOME EXPERIMENTATION, LEARN NEW THINGS, ITERATE ON IDEAS

The time spent on this step may vary but a blogger can expect that one will be doing it more frequently in the future before he can realize the success of his blog.

Thus, in conclusion, blogging is not that easy. And though there are guidelines that bloggers can follow, they should not expect that they can get favorable results right away. Basically, blogging would involve repeated processes of launching, promoting, analyzing, applying of results, and relaunching before the bloggers would see any progress concerning their blog sites.

Is Video Marketing Effective A Look At The Numbers

Video marketing is now one of the latest digital and business trends that is dominating the internet today. At present, it is estimated to account for at least half of the total internet traffic. Moreover, by 2018, the video marketing-related traffic is expected to rise by 79%.

Thus, given the an estimated 93% of the marketers resort to video marketing for their promotional needs, online marketing, and communication, apparently, a lot of people do think that it is the most optimum means of achieving their business goals.

However, one cannot be sure that video marketing is 100% effective. In fact, some people would doubt if it really serves the marketing purpose of various industries. Moreover, though a lot of people utilize video marketing, it seems that they do not employ any well-planned strategy when creating their videos, as shown by a research. From the said research, several conclusions have been made:

AMIBIGUITY

In the said research, 78% of the participant agreed that a video is an important tool in successful marketing. However, more than half of the participants failed to measure the ROI of the videos they used for their campaigns. In addition, more than 75% did not have a clear idea on how their ROI can be measured quantitatively, indicating that even though the marketers invited in the study used video marketing, they could not prove its efficiency through their ROIs and specific quantitative data.

In this period, it seems that everything is now done based on science or the scientific method. And the business industry does not go very far behind. Thus, it is strange when business just jump right at using videos for their marketing purposes. Moreover, it becomes weirder since the 61% of the participants in the study were intending to increase their usage of video marketing.

In the past years, more and more people have gained access to watching videos at a very low price. Possibly, companies are using this trend to their advantage because it seems that most of their competitors are also doing it. Some other reasons are that industry experts claim about the effectiveness of video marketing or that companies are hoping that luck would side with them.

VALIDITY

A lot of people seem to use video marketing as a business tactic without necessarily validating its success and regard to the amount of money that will be spent. Taking a look a bit closely, such actions may seem absurd. Thus, for some who have already associated these issues with video marketing, their question is why such process has become so popular that people are now almost doing it blindly.

In the research, the participants claimed that they resorted to video marketing based on their instincts, and they had a positive feeling about it. About 80% said that they had come to understand their product or service more through their videos, whereas 55% thought that using a video increased the traffic to their websites. Meanwhile, 57% had faith on the capacity of video marketing in increasing conversion rates, and 30% assumed that video marketing may be capable of reducing support queries.

ESTABLISHING CERTAINTY

Based on its characters, video marketing may really have the potential to meet the marketing needs of various industries and businesses. However, the world is now in an every progressing state, and innovations are being made everyday. With such changes, it is only logical to assess whether video marketing is still valid for promoting products and services.

With regard to the issues mentioned above, people can use the following tips to maximize their use of video marketing for business purposes.

ESTABLISH YOUR GOALS

Clear goals are the primary reasons why a video should be used in marketing. These goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely). With such characteristics evaluating the ROI of a video becomes easier, and tools for creating the necessary content to reach the goal of the video can be determined. In some cases, video marketers focus on improving the user understanding and increasing the time in a website or lead generation.

Whatever the reasons are, the goals for creating a video for marketing should be clear and specific. The goals can also be used in setting up the parameters for assessing the success of video marketing.

MEASURE AND ASSESS THE RESULTS

The effectiveness of video marketing is influenced by how much of the goals have been achieved. For subjective goals, including understanding of the product or service offered, one of the tools that can be used for assessment is market research. The research can be done in an informal manner, wherein the customers are asked regarding the video and their thoughts about it. The customers should also be asked whether they gained additional insights into a product or whether modifications should be made with the video.

Other factors, including the time spent on a website, impact on conversion, and other measurable variables, can be easily evaluated. On-page and UX analytics programs can be used to assess such factors.

For examples, tools, such as Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, and ClickTale, can be used in visualizing the users’ experience through heat maps and video recordings of the sessions of the users. Website managers or owners can determine whether their visitors are watching the video and whether there are any changes in the conversion rates after the people have watched the footage.

Though marketers seems to greatly favor the use of video marketing for their businesses, results from the mentioned study indicate that a lot of people really do not have a clear idea on how it can be effectively utilized. Thus, it is important a specific model for tracking and improving the ROI of campaigns should be constructed for the marketers who are onto video marketing. The tips mentioned can greatly help in serving this purpose.

Hopefully, more data can be obtained regarding the effectiveness of video marketing, and the changes concerning the video industry should also be recognized. In addition, some people are now working gathering more information about video marketing from different perspectives. Basically, they aim at understanding how a video used in marketing resonates with the consumers. With any luck, promising results and additional information will be available for the marketers in the near future.

In the field of SEO, keyword research can be considered as one of the most important factor that affect the results. In campaign planning, it is not possible to create one when target phrases are unknown. Moreover, it is important that SEO managers know their competitors in order to properly estimate the costs and returns. Thus, knowing the proper way of doing keyword research is very important in SEO. In relation to this, there quite a few things that people in the field of SEO should learn about.

PREPARING FOR THE KEYWORD SEARCH

In general, keyword research involves the identification of phrase that are used in search engines by people who are searching for information. The process also includes determining the volume and competitiveness of the terms used.

In SEO, keyword research plays a very crucial role because its correct utilization serves as guide in the design and creation of websites as well as the development of their contents.

In most cases, keywords are dissected and grouped according to the number of words considered in the query phrases. For a keyword with a greater number of words, ranking the terms is much easier because there is less competition. However, what people should keep in mind is that such cases will not always hold true. In fact, several instances are possibly. For example, long tail keywords versus the head and the body keywords are given a keyword difficulty score. The body and the long tail keywords may have competitive scores, or in some cases, the long tail keyword is basically given a higher difficulty score.

Some people claim that the long tail keywords only become more difficult when the queries involve brand names.

SCHOOL OF THOUGHTS OF SEO

It is a common problem for SEOs and even internet marketers to focus on optimizing for the traffic coming to a website and not on converting the visitors. However, they should regulate their effort in optimization based on the goals that they have in mind. For e-commerce or service-based business, resources should be invested in those that lead to the good ranking of the terms and thus a possible sale. This kind of approach aims at not only optimizing for traffic but for conversion of visitors as well.

However, in advertising or publishing business, where revenues are determined by the number of visitors or pageviews, focusing on increasing the traffic to a website seems more plausible.

In all cases, when planning for an SEO campaign, the optimization strategy should take into account the goals of the campaign. For the more straight-forward goals, including the increase in revenue, the optimization should focus on the can be effective in improving the profits of a business.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A KEYWORD

A keyword can be value depending on two important factors”

Monthly search volume compared with that of the competition

Potential for revenue acquisition or the conversion rate

The monthly search volume can be obtained through various methods, but Google Keyword planner is one of the easiest to use. Though it works differently from the previous keyword tool and it tends to focus on AdWords, Google keyword planner can still give the user useful data for the keyword research.

As a tip, Google keyword planner users should be aware of the toggles between the Ad Groups and Keywords. They may follow the suggestions below to make their work easier:

Switch the default from “ad group ideas” to “keyword ideas” after inputting the seed keywords.

Build an initial list then click “Review Estimates.” At this point, “Ad Group” should be changed to “Keyword.” Afterward, a bid can be entered to check for any important data.

When doing a synopsis of a SERP, the keyword researcher is advised to look for certain signals. For example, they can use the Mozbar extension for chrome. The tool can be used in glancing SEO data at the URL level, giving them an idea of the status of their competition.

Meanwhile, Term Explorer can be very effective in the comprehensive macro analysis of an organic SERP, whereas SEOmoz is popular because of its keyword rank report. However, SEOmoz cannot provide a whole view of the SERP, which makes Term Explorer the better tool for such purpose.

When using Term Explorer, people can use the Keyword Analyzer tool for gaining some macro SERP insights. Moreover, the results can be published if the user chooses to do so. In addition, the analyzer can provide a more condensed view of the mission critical metrics for each keyword that is put in. The data can then be further analyzed by exporting the level metrics to CSV.

During the export, date metrics are provided for the date points indicated below:

Keyword

Ranked URLs

Average monthly search volume

Average Cost per click

Binary indicating whether a keyword is included in a title, URL, page headers, or appears several times on a page

Word count on a page

Outbound links

Relevancy score

Backlinks to the page

PageRank of the page

Backlinks to the domain

Age of the domain

PageRank of the domain

Indication whether a domain is an Exact match domain

Trust score

Links score

Difficulty score

On the other hand, the individual URL Analyzer can be used in acquiring the data mentioned above based on specific sets of URLs.

UNDERSTANDING THE KEYWORD DATA

With a Excel, a keyword researcher can organize his data and determine both the upper and lower maxima with regard to the overall SERP competition. In most cases, SEO experts would claim that utilizing a macro approach to dissect SERPs at the keyword level is very important, especially for enterprise SEO and for expanding websites.

The macro approach to keyword research is best for dealing with heavy-content websites but not in intent-focused keyword research, such as in e-commerce, software, and others.

IDENTIFYING THE SEARCHER INTENT

Learning something about the psychographic of the target audience is necessary in conversion optimization. Moreover, the researcher must be able to identify the reasons behind the most common segments of search intent. In what are considered to be the four most common segments, keyword researchers should only focus on commercial investigation and transactional queries.

For the data mentioned, the keywords should be categorized and grouped then analyze the potential stage of the conversion funnel. Through segmentation of keywords into funnels, the researcher can infer from the data the search intent.

The next step after identifying the search intent is relating the keywords to the search context. Keyword researchers that even word order can influence the meaning behind a query, and that they must ensure that they targeting the right keywords.

SPEND SOME TIME ON RESEARCH

Fortunately for keyword researchers, there are now various SEO-related tools that can help them with their work. The tool may include a variety of functions, such as pulling search volume, providing related suggestion, competition in AdWords, and other types of information that may prove to be useful in keyword research.

Some of the most common SEO tools is the GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL

Google keyword tool can be used in obtaining an average monthly search by setting the right criteria. The user should look for the box in the lower left hand side of the tool to do this. In addition, the data for the average monthly search volume may include the locally or globally obtained ones. However, users should take note the ‘local’ in Google Keyword tool pertains to the country index.

From the data provided by the tool, the keyword prospect list can be built, though other tools may be needed to make the list more comprehensive. And Excel can be used for such purpose. The user need only to click the download button that can be found on the upper left corner of the Google keyword tool to export the keyword list as CSV and open it in Excel.

CHECK FOR ANY PLURALS

A lot of SEOs neglect running the singular and plural versions of their terms during a keyword research. In most cases, one would notice that one of the forms may be higher than the other. Meanwhile, the plural version is more often associated with commercial intent. Thus, for keyword researchers, they should also focus on the difference in the monthly search volume for the singular and plural versions of a term.

EXPAND THE LIST

In expanding the keyword lists, tools, such as the ubersuggest, can be used. Basically, ubersuggest works by running the keyword phrase against each letter of the alphabet and different number combinations to obtain the most frequently searched permutations.

Ubersuggest considers that root phrase before scraping the results suggested by Google. With this, all the potential permutations related on the target keyword can be captured.

Afterward, the user can now select the child keywords that should be added to the prospective keyword list. Clicking the “get” button will allow the user to create a modal window for copying and pasting the generated data.

The selected related keyword can also be rerun in the Google keyword tool to identify the keyword data goodness.

In a number of cases, the Google keyword tool generates more suggested keywords when the input is less than 10.

Meanwhile, there are other types of tools that can be used in acquiring data on keyword usage and competitiveness between paid and organic search. Some of those tools include the following:

SEMrush

SEMrush is effective in providing data on search volume, average CPC, number of competing pages, rank results, related keywords, and the names of companies that are purchasing ad spaces. This is probably the easiest and most effective way. Your competition has already done all the work for you. Pick 3 LSI keywords plug them into google and find 3 or 4 quality websites and run them through SEMrush. It will tell you which keywords are ranking for those domains. Just make an aggregate list based on the top keywords your competition is ranking for. There is no real reason to complicate the process any more than this.

SpyFu

SpyFu can be used in generating data about search volume, average CPCs per day, number of advertisers bidding on a keyword, and the AdWord ads that are currently active

Keyword Spy

GRAB THE BIG OPPORTUNITIES

After analyzing the data on Excel, it is important for keyword researchers to be able to discern the opportunities that are being presented to them. To be able to take hold of such opportunities, the top queries should run through Google Trends in order to assess the seasonal volatility of the keywords. Moreover, focus should be paid to the average index of interest over time, as this tends to confuse a number of keyword researchers. In reality, what they should be looking for is whether the current interest has not declined completely. The generate graph can be used for this purpose. Then, third part litmus test should be utilized in validating the popularity of a topic.

CONSTRUCT A KEYWORD VALIDATION MODEL

An evaluation method should be used to avoid spending a lot of money in targeting keywords that won’t really bring back much profit. Experts in keyword research commonly utilize combinations of different methods to evaluate and to get a better of sense of the data in their hands. For example, some may use the keyword competitiveness scoring in SerpIQ with SEOmoz’s keyword difficulty score. Then, they can use different formulas to obtain their target score.

KEYWORD RESEARCH FOR PAGE TITLES

Page titles for search can be optimized and this can be done by balancing properly the volume and intent. The title keyword composition would greatly depend on the goals:

For traffic optimization, combinations should be used to maximize the use of high search volume terms

For conversion, intent is given more importance compared with search volume.

However, for the cases mentioned above, keyword researchers are advised to look for other ways by which they can combine exact match phrases to add more leverage to their strings of keywords.

CLOSING THE LOOP

In the field of keyword research, a certain amount of time should be spent on analyzing which of the keywords are working and making the necessary adjustments on the content and link strategies.

Smart Ways To Get More YouTube Subscribers

Nowadays, video content can be considered as the leading form of content marketing. Aside from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are also now inviting video marketers to use their platform for hosting their promotional videos.

At present, YouTube owns the top spot when it comes to video-blogging and marketing, and because it is free and is associated with Google, millions of people utilize the platform.

For YouTube channel owners, their major problem with the site would be attracting more subscribers to their channels and increasing the views of their videos.

Every month, at least a billion unique visitors go to YouTube, providing a very large number of audience for the numerous videos found on the site. By catering to different genres and types, YouTube serves as a platform for people of different race and culture to share their talents, works, and everything that they think are worth capturing with a camera.

One good use of YouTube is for uploading tutorials for doing all kinds of things. And with a lot of people resorting to YouTube to watch videos for different reasons, it has become a highly potential ground for online marketing and publicity.

Bloggers and other individuals also see YouTube as means of reaching other people and connecting with them. Likewise, using YouTube is great factor that can influence the amount of traffic that is directed to a specific website. Thus, there is really a need for YouTube account owners to gain more subscribers to their channels.

Basically, the first and foremost thing that people should with their accounts is too add some modifications. By using some well-known and tested tools, the chances of gaining more subscriber is high. Still, channel owners should realize that they should exert considerable effort if they really want to see some optimum results.

To help YouTube channel owners to acquire more subscribers, there are some ways that they are recommended to try.

SELECTING THE PROPER TOOL

Knowing the right tool to use in improving a YouTube channel greatly helps in gaining more views and thus, subscribers. Tubebuddy is one of the most recommended tools that can be used for such purposes.

WRITE A SCRIPT FOR THE VIDEOS

Any YouTube channel should focus on one general theme surrounding the videos as well as their structure. In most cases, people should focus on their interests and further develop and learn related skills that can help them in creating their videos. In addition, people are advised to refrain from just copying the styles of other popular YouTube channels. Instead, they should focus on adding originality to their own channels.

A video created with a scrip can lead to better results, and using a script also helps a person in organizing and tracking the videos that he creates. A video creator should follow a certain guideline that would cover the elements, starting from the plot to the conclusion, while shooting the video. Moreover, the video should not divert from the main them that is considered. In addition, the scrip can greatly help in ensuring the smooth flow of events in video and thus create something of quality for the viewers.

A video script should contain all the pertinent details, such as the dialogues, the actions that will be shown in the video, the cues, and so on. Correct usage of a language and proper phrasing should also be noted, and they should be decided upon based on the needs of the audience.

For those who want to learn some techniques in cinematography, they should check out The Five C’s of Cinematography: Essential tips for film making. The Five C’s can be used by both amateur and expert cinematographers.

ENSURE THAT THE VIDEO CONTAINS A HIGHLY ENGAGING CONTENT

The content of a video should be off quality and made using maximum efforts and the best of resources. Moreover, the content should be engaging, informative, and entertaining for the viewers. Having the audience get bored while in the midst of watching a video greatly reduces the chances of gaining more subscribers.

On the other hand, a video that created using a well-thought of script increases the possibility of attracting more channel subscribers. Moreover, people can combine all the said video qualities and create something that will blow away the minds of the viewers.

In other cases, uploading burse and evergreen videos may also help in gaining more subscribers. Burst videos can attract viewers for a short period of time, whereas evergreen videos remain longer and relevant.

IMPROVE THE UPLOADING FREQUENCY

The primary reason why viewers subscribe to a channel is because they like the quality or really admire the kind of video that an uploader creates.

However, to engage more subscribers, the channels should be more consistent. Viewers are not that fond of channels that show discrepancies in their manner of uploading videos.

Thus, when an uploader releases a video, it should be timely, at regular intervals, and in structured fashion. In fact, YouTube channels owners are recommended to publish a video once a week or several times a month.

Uploaders should also follow a certain schedule when uploading their videos. Releasing videos whenever they want may prove to be detrimental to a channel’s reputation. Thus, if possible, the uploading of videos should be done following a regular schedule.

GIVE THE VIDEOS EYE-CATCHING TITLES

The title or names given to the videos is another great factor affecting a channel’s success. The names given to the videos should be unique and can easily catch the attention of the viewers and pique in their interest. As soon as the viewers become interested with the title of a video, they are more apt to watch and the chances of them subscribing to the channel is increased.

Uploaders also need to learn some important things about SEO, because they would have to work their way around keywords to make their videos more searchable. They can do the following to improve the titles of their videos and then reach greater number of people:

Try using Google Adwords. Googld Adwords can greatly help in identifying the kinds of things that people search for over the web, and from the results, YouTube channel owners can have some ideas regarding their target groups. In relation to this, they should focus on creating videos that results in high volume research but with minimal competition.

Limit the length of the video. Ideally, people should use 50 characters in the title of their videos, because Google only allows for 66 characters in the search, in addition to the word “YouTube” before the video.

The title of the video should be descriptive enough and should be able to provide the viewers with some ideas regarding the contents.

Only use the word “Video” in the title if the target audience would be coming from the search engine. Basically, using “Video” with the title does not increases its rank in YouTube’s search engine.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR CHANNELS

To make the channels trustworthy, it is better to utilize the customization options that can be found in YouTube. The visual appearance is very important in establishing the identity of a channel and showing the viewers a sense of professionals.

For blogs that are complemented with a YouTube channels, the channel should contain some elements that can be recognized by the followers of the blog.

For additional and quality customizations, there are some paid products that YouTube channel owners can used to establish their channels as a brand.

It is possible for people to customized the URL of their channel after the customization process. This can be done by customizing the personal background header, which should include the important elements of the blog. As for the YouTube channel bio, it should be concise and precise and should allow to people visit the blog through a provided link.

CREATE PERSONALIZED VIDEO THUMBNAILS

A lot of YouTube video creators favor the use of customized video thumbnails for their videos. The thumbnails should include annotations and relevant images to increase the videos’ click through rate. In addition, customized thumbnails can give the viewers some insights into the contents of a video.

Thumbnails can be selected based on three intervals: at the 1/4th mark, ½ mark, and 3/4th mark. Uploaders should only choose which they think can perfectly show something about their video.

CREATE A CHANNEL TRAILER THAT CATCHES THE ATTENTION OF THE PEOPLE

The channel trailer is also very important in increasing the subscribers to a channel. YouTube’s channel trailer allows the channel trailers to automatically play upon accessing a specific channel URL.

Through the channel trailer, a channel gains the chance of catching the viewers’ in a span of 90 seconds. Normally, the channel trailer should be between 30 and 60 seconds. In this regard, the trailer must be able to relay to the potential subscribers the kind of contents that they will be seeing and the other perks that they may get once they subscribe to a channel.

For those who are comfortable with talking in front of the camera, they should include some clips featuring themselves.

Moreover, channel owners should check their viewer retention reports and see whether they are losing any potential subscribers. This way, they can assess whether they should modify their channel trailers.

USE “CALL TO ACTION” ANNOTATIONS

“Call to action” annotations consist of the popup that viewers see while a video. These annotations tend to be annoying, and thus, channel owners should learn how to use them properly.

In a number of cases, increased channel subscriptions have been linked with the use of “call to action” annotations. Thus, to make the annotations less annoying, channel owners should just add a simple link for the subscription to their channel in their videos.

On the other hand, some viewers may find the use of a graphical button for “call-to-action” purposes. Graphical buttons can be included in the videos with annotations encouraging the viewers to click the buttons.

ADD SUBSCRIBE BUTTONS TO BLOGS

YouTube allows its members to link their channels with their websites, and thus, this allows people to attract more people to visit their channels. In addition, uploaders can have their channels verified and be considered as their brand on YouTube.

In the channel settings of an account’s YouTube page, the owner may include his website’s or blog’s URL to integrate his YouTube channel with his blog or website. The blog or site URL can also be added to the description of the channel. Meanwhile, on the blogs, “Subscribe” buttons can be added to the sidebars to entice more visitors into visiting a YouTube channel.

SHORTEN THE VIDEOS TO 5 MINUTES

YouTube also host videos that are detailed and quite long. However, the most converted ones are those run only for about 5 minutes. In 2014, the reported average length of most YouTube videos is 4.4 minutes. Thus, for those who are just starting with their channels, that is the optimum time length that they should for their videos until they are able to assess whether they should create longer or shorter ones.

Once a channel has already a considerable number of followers, the owners now can try creating videos with varying time length and check which of them are more favored by their subscribers. They can ask for their subscribers through the comments sections.

Meanwhile, the best-converted videos run for about 3 minutes. Thus, a short, simple, and informative video will likely attract more viewers to subscribe to a channel.

USE THE YOUTUBE INTRO AND OUTRO

YouTube Intro and Outro can be used in creating a brand and also in adding more flavor to the video. A highly engaging Intro will ensure that the viewers are hooked to the video.

DO YOUR BEST IN EDITING THE VIDEOS

If possible, channel owners should edit their videos and come up with different versions then choose which among them is the best for their channel.

Videos are that are edited in haste and without much effort can only affect the integrity of a channel. Thus, when they can, uploaders should shoot multiple videos and carefully select that which should be uploaded in YouTube.

If necessary, a scene or footage can be shot multiple times. People can also use Adobe Premier in editing their videos.

ENHANCE VIDEO DESCRIPTIONS

Aside from increasing the chances of being searched in search engines, the video descriptions should also give the viewers a clear idea of what they would see once they start watching video. In addition, the used keywords for the SEO should be included in the description. Moreover, it should sound very natural and authentic. In other cases, some include links to other website to provide people with more options.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE META TAGS

The Google Keywords tool can be used in searching for ideas on relevant keywords that can be used on YouTube videos. However, the relevant keywords for a video should be discoverable both in Google and YouTube.

However, people should take whether they are using too much or too few keywords. in relation to this, they should do some reading regarding the use of meta tags and how they can help in increasing the number of subscribers to a YouTube channel.

The identified keywords should be relevant to the video at hand. In fact, there are some videos that have low count of views not because of their content but because of their low discoverability.

Channel owners can use metadata to determine how their videos can be displayed in the search results and of course, for encouraging more viewers to check out their channels. Uploaders should do some research and look for well-converted videos and analyze the meta tags that are used on them. However, channel owners should greatly avoid copy-pasting the meta tags for other videos.

16. Ask

You can ask in your annotations but also include a request to subscribe in the video and also in the description. If you don’t ask no one will even think about it. At least you can’t expect them to think about it unless there is some reason they would want to come back.

Last February, Google made announcements regarding the removal of text ads on the right sidebars of the search result pages. Rather, Google search engines users would start seeing at most four ads above the organic listings, and another three ads could be found at the bottom of the page.

Still, analysis should be concerning the impacts of these changes made by Google. For example, analysts would have to consider different factors, such as impressions, CPC, CTRs, average position, and others. Thus, for those who have noticed the said changes yet, there are some things that they should know.

DETAILS ON THE CHANGES

With the announced changes, some of the most prominent ones could be noticed on the desktop results:

Absence of text ads on the right rail of the search results.

Inclusion of four text ads on the mainline area above the organic listings. The ads are said to be for more highly commercial queries.

Text ads would be placed at the bottom of the search engine results pages.

The total number of texts ads shown will be reduced from 11 to seven.

Product listing ad blocks as well as the Knowledge Panel could now be accessed on the right rail on the relevant queries.

The updates were expected to be implemented worldwide, though not all the search partners would be offering the sidebar inventory.

WHY THE NEED FOR THE SUDDEN SHIFT

A lot of people were surprised by the sudden changes implemented by Google, but it seems that the company had already been planning them for quite a while. In fact, Google had already conducted some tests.

In 2010, Google began their study on the four ads located above the organic listings, which basically included mortgage queries. Then last years, more people started noticing the new format of the ads that appeared along with other queries. However, the sidebars contained no ads.

With regard to the said changes, Search Engine Land made inquiries to Google regarding about the tests, and Google replied that those changes were not final yet and the test was only conducted on a small number of queries.

However, just as mentioned, Google expanded the changes to everything searched on their search engine. In fact, Merkle RKG’s Andy Taylor noticed the slow shift in the ads of Google search results.

DEFINING HIGHLY COMMERCIAL QUERIES

As stated, with the changes in the search result pages, four ads would now be seen with the search results. These so-called highly commercial queries would include examples, such as “hotel in New York City” or “car insurance”

However, when you take close look, it seems that such queries refer to those which Google intends to purchase.

THE IMPACTS OF THE SAID CHANGES ON PRODUCT LISTING ADS AND AD TESTS IN KNOWLEDGE PANELS

At the moment, people need not yet to worry about the impacts of changes in the search results pages.

Google conducted some ad tests in Knowledge Panels, and it seems that they will be continuing those tests for a while. In 2013, the tests included some car queries. Then in 2014, addition items were included, such as music, movies, and books. Based on the results, the removal of the right rail ads did not influence the tests on the Knowledge Panels.

However, Google is not yet done running tests. In fact, they have already moved on to testing Product Listing Ad layouts. For example, some people noticed the appearance of an expandable PLA block, which when expanded, displays up to 16 PLAs above the fold on the desktop.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN WITH CPCs

As the changes with Google continue to happen overtime, one can’t help but wonder about the impacts that such changes may have. However, people cannot surmise anything concrete yet. Some think that since there will only be fewer ads on the results pages, the increasing supply and demand would result to higher prices of the ads. Still, there are other factors that should be considered.

For example, it is not known whether the advertisers would be willing for the bottom-page ads just like they did for the right rail ads. Moreover, the additional impression volume of the top-page ads may overcome CPCs as well.

On the other hand, some may not agree with the above hypothesis. And basically, all the things that people say about the Google’s changes are still mere speculations. More data are needed to make any concrete and reliable conclusions regarding Google’s new policies.

At present, no major impacts could be observed on the CPCs yet, but more people are interested with the shift on bid minimums for the first page and top page.

Clearly, advertises would have to take some actions in order to keep up with the updates in Google’s search engine. As a result, there may be some fluctuations in the auction patterns in the near future, as the advertisers try to make the necessary changes on their part.

In the end, people would still have to wait for a while to see the major impacts that updates implemented by Google have.

Penguin 4 Explained

Just recently, the webmaster analyst for Google, Gary Illyes, twitted about some important news regarding the Penguin update of Google. In the said tweet, the new Penguin update is expected to be released before the years ends. This new update is music to the ears of the SEO practitioners and other digital marketers who are very loyal in managing their websites based on the guidelines set by Google. However, for those who engage in black hat SEO practices, the update is practically bad news.

THE GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATE

The latest Penguin update would aim at addressing spam link tactics and monitoring the quality of the links included in a website. Initially released in April 2012, the Penguin update caused an uproar in the field of digital marketing and other related industries. All of sudden, people stopped seeing the websites that were deemed to be not conforming to set guidelines by the search engine. In fact, many of those sites were subjected to manual actions.

These past few years, additional updates have been released, with the changes aimed at modifying the search results. Still, one cannot deny the good intention behind the creation of the update, and that is to favor those websites who engage in proper marketing practices and provide some punishment who work around the rules.

PENGUIN 4.0

Rumor has it that Penguin 4.0 will serve as a real-time update to the currently used algorithm, implying that the algorithm involved with Penguin will constantly updated. Such kind of update can benefit the digital marketing community, especially there are still a lot of people who resort to spamming tactics. Google has already announced that black hat practices are basically ineffective. However, it seems that a certain number of people still manage to utilize such practices. Still, people should still applaud Google for trying its best to defeat black hat marketers.

And with the new real-time feature of the upcoming Penguin update, spotting spam link profiles and properly ranking the credible sites will become much easier.

Though a lot of people may have already heard about the term SEO, not all may be familiar with White Hat SEO. White Hat SEO is something that people can use in enhancing a search performance based on the protocols following by the search engine. The aim of this practice is to improve the search performance of a website but still be able to conform to the terms of service of the search engine. This way, the website remains within the parameters set by Google.

TACTICS USED IN WHITE HAT SEO

Presenting quality content and services

WordStream includes the Keyword Discovery Tool and the Long Tail Keyword Tool. These tools are especially created for providing ideas and product enhancements. The two tools work in collaboration to help a website grow its keyword list and content suggestions through recording the search queries of people leading to the website. Then, the results are automatically added to the WordStream database for the website owner’s review.

Utilizing meta tags that are truly descriptive and keyword-rich

Keyword Grouping Tool can be used as guide for using meta tags and meta keywords, which may include misspellings or other forms of the keywords that are set.

Modifying the website to be easily navigable

Search Engine Optimization tools can be used in visualizing and creating a hierarchy of the keywords. Then, the keywords are group based on different criteria, relevance and popularity, which make it easy to determine among various pages the one that bares the greater potential across a website.

THE IMPORTANCE OF USING WHITE HAT SEO TECHNIQUES

Not opting to use White Hat SEO increases the chances of a website getting banned from Google as well as other search engines. And as the top search engine used by millions of people, Google is an important factor that can affect the traffic coming to a website. Thus, when a website is banned from Google, changes are there won’t be much traffic that will be directed to it. Moreover, in the case that a website gets banned, chances being re-listed as a trusted site is not that high. Meanwhile, website owners would not want to know what could happen if they are given a lifetime ban from Google.

Thus, to avoid incurring any unwanted banishment, website owners should learn a few things about White Hat SEO. They can learn more about these things at eh Webmaster Guidelines that are set by Google. In fact, utilizing Google’s Webmaster resources can be very helping in gaining some useful insight into white hat SEO.

It is very important that website managers learn about some important White Hat SEO practices because such things will help them in ensuring that their website will remain ethical and sustainable for their goals. However, what managers should realize is that they still have the option to use automation in their search campaigns.

For example, people can use WordStream, a notable automation program for easing the process of ranking a website. SEO keyword tool is another thing that can be used to optimize the ranking of websites while still conforming to the guidelines set by Google.

In short, people should really take time to learn about White Hat SEO practices since Google is basically the greatest factor that can affect the traffic leading to the websites. With White Hat SEO practices, people can enhance their websites and make sure that the changes are innovative, have long-term effects, and ethical. Still, website managers should still look for ways to make their websites very noticeable while still conforming to the guidelines set by Google for website searches.

Conversion rates can be considered as the percentage of people who perform the desired action for them of website managers or owners. With regard to conversion rates, an organization, company, or person manning a website may observe for the following trends:

The number of people who fill in a form or buy an item from a website

The number of callers who are provided with proposals

Which of the proposals are won

Other

INCREASING THE CONVERSION RATES

For any website, there’s always a way for the managers or owners to increase the conversion rates of their visitors. And with the improvement in the conversion rates, they increase their profits significantly.

Let’s say that $1000 is spent on advertising, and with that amount, the same number of people may visit a website. In terms of conversion rate, if the rate of conversion is 5%, then the website would incur 50 new customers. And with 6% conversion rate, 60 new customers would be converted. When no additional advertising cost is needed, the profits of the website would increase dramatically.

METHODS OF INCREASING THE CONVERSION RATES

THROUGH ONLINE METHODS

SOCIAL PROOF

Providing social means showcasing the testimonials or positive reviews of the customers or citing case studies that support that product or service that is offer. This method can greatly enhance the conversion rate of a website.

CLEAR CONTACT INFORMATION

This method includes providing the company’s or website owners contact information, such as a phone number or a live chat option, to ensure the customers that what is being offered to them is authentic and that they have the choice to contact the seller anytime that they want.

PROVIDE PROOF OF CREDIBILITY

Applying to have a website sealed by the Better Business Bureau or website security firms, such as Verisign, is a great way of showing people credibility.

OFFER GUARANTEES

More people are apt to be confident about buying from a website if it is offering a certain guarantee or extending that is already offered.

CREATE ATTENTON-CATCHING HEADLINES

It is very important that a website catches people’s attention by just a glance. That is why they should put extra effort in creating headlines that would make people want to browse more and purchase from a website.

THROUGH OFFLINE METHODS

In most cases, the methods presented above can also be used in increasing conversion rates while offline. However, there are still some ways that website managers are recommended to try, such as the following:

TRIAL CLOSES

In this method, the prospective customers that do not move forward to a final buying decision are asked certain questions. For example, they may be asked whether they are willing to buy an item if it was offered at a price that they may like.

CONVINCE CUSTOMERS TO STAY FOR AWHILE

If they are going to spend a considerable amount of money for an item, a customer can be expected to take some time before deciding to make a purchase. Thus, in such cases, the sellers should converse with the customers and ask for things that they are considering before they decide to buy an item. Afterward, they should provide more encouragement by giving the customers proof, including research studies, or additional information that they may find useful. If the customer is willing to have additional conversations, then it is possible that he is hesitating about the product of the item. However, when customers do not want to engage in further negotiations, then the sellers should probe and check whether there are other factors that prevent the customers from buying.

MAKE IT A POINT TO CONSTANTLY TRACK CONVERSION RATES

Website managers should always keep track of a website’s conversion rates because this can help them in assessing the situation of the website and planning for strategies that can be used to improve the conversion of the visitors. Likewise, they may be able to point any errors on their current strategies and make the necessary adjustments and corrections. To monitor the conversion rates of a website, managers can use tracking tools, including the likes of Guiding Metrics, which can greatly help them in monitoring their metrics and subsequently improving the profits.